Duncan
by Marching Madly Onward
Summary: In the before time, he was very young and very vulnerable. Then a human came along, and he was made to feel very, very small and very, very worthless. He was left to die, and he thought his life was over. Then another human came along, and everything began to change.


_for the livejournal genfic meme_

**Duncan**

It starts as a day like many others, which is what makes the life-changing event even stranger.

I emerge from the hollow of the old trunk. I don't know who made it, or if they will return. There is a sense of sadness hanging over it, though, so I assume the creature that made this place home has passed away or moved on to a place that doesn't have this gray cloud hanging over it.

I would do the same, if I could, but I cannot. I am impaired. It is my nature—many fear and hate me. Both the Others and the Masters. But even with my nature, I might have been able to leave this place if I did not drag my leg behind me.

I cannot forget Old Master. I cannot forget the wound that left me lame and made him turn his eyes on me in disgust. I saw a great many things from Old Master—anger, pity, frustration—but it was not until the great snake that he hated me. He said that I was weak, that I couldn't even defeat a trainer so young and so clearly inexperienced.

So he left me, here, in the wilds, to die.

I am not entirely helpless, you see. I lived in the wilds long before Old Master took me in, and have done so again after him. But I am very far from home. The smells, the psychic impressions here…they frighten me. I do not know how much longer I will last.

I am already exhausted, and the day has only begun. The dreams are thin here. Only Masters have the kinds of minds that can spin dreams whole and heavy enough to give me a true and lasting sustenance.

They hate our kind for this. I know Old Master did.

I am so hungry and tired that I do not realize I have strayed from the slim safety of the bush and stumbled upon another Master until she is staring me down, Pokéball in hand. My heart sinks.

I have seen this kind many times before. They hunt wild ones like me so that their own can hurt us, growing stronger. I do not presume to be any better. I did the same under Old Master's hand, but it is so much harder to be on this side.

When the Bug appears in a flash of light, all hope is lost. I make a token effort, but those foreign, frantic minds are so alien to me that I cannot comprehend them. Its stinger pierces my stomach, and I think, for a time, that this was the release I have wanted all along.

* * *

The New Master calls me Duncan and puts me on the other side of the hunt. It is gratifying and disorienting. I had counted myself dead when her Bug—Beedrill?—stabbed me, but she gave me the gift of life so that I could lend her my meager strength in a place called Vermillion.

It is not enough.

The Electrics scorch and singe my fur until I choke on the smoke rising off my body. She recalls me, sending out another, and I know that I have failed a Master again. I will be discarded again once New Master's patience has worn with enough of my failures.

* * *

The Others cannot come to a consensus on me.

The tall, strong one immediately makes it known that I am not welcome. I am weak and devious and hiding something. He is not entirely wrong. I do not want any of them to know I have been with another Master. I do not want them to know my shame. But I know his venom stems mainly from his fear. My kind is to his as the predator is to prey. His mind, so simple, is a trifle for one like mine to invade.

I avoid the Beedrill. I would like to say it is a practicality. We cannot communicate, not with his mind blank to me. In truth, the old scar across my stomach still throbs at the sight of it buzzing over New Master's shoulder.

The ghastly one is not much better. His kind and mine are enemies, but he does not care. He would much rather float about my head, just out of my stubby reach, taunting me in ways that I would not mind if only he would stop talking. It is strange, his relationship and mine. He has deduced my insecurities well enough that he could drive me to a rage if he so desired, but he would rather flit about with harmless pranks that do little more than annoy me. He pokes and prods without ever taking a stab at me. Despite (because?) this, he is also my most frequent opposite in conversation.

Of the Others, he is my best friend.

The sandy one does not much care. At first, I thought her mentally deficient. She says little and thinks hardly at all. It takes time—more than I care to admit—to realize that this is simply her way. She has been with the New Master since she was a baby. She knows nothing other than fighting for New Master's sake. There is nothing more for her to consider in life. She counts herself lucky that has known home and purpose for as long as she has been.

I envy her.

* * *

We are joined by other Others in time—the fox of fire, the rolling thunder, the walking eggs, the fish that became a dragon—but things are different now. They look to me as an elder just as I looked to the sandy one (I now know her name to be Sasha) when I first joined this pack. I am especially fond of the walking eggs. New Master names them Edward.

They are a green, growing thing, but they are also like me. I delight in having a kindred spirit for the first time in far too long.

The affair it tainted by memories of Another of our kind. A proud, bewhiskered one who presumed himself the strongest of our kind.

He was Old Master's favorite.

I put it from my mind. Perhaps, if I make Edward powerful, or at least teach him to shape and channel his own power more effectively, New Master will not put me aside. She will see that I have some worth, even if it is not on the field of battle.

* * *

New Master brings us to a place called Saffron, where "Jim" uses Others of my kind. I am at once excited and fearful. I want to fight them, to clash my mind against their own and prove mine is great. I want to run away, hide forever so that New Master will not see how little I have grown.

I am surprised when she calls upon me, and I see a furry, screaming thing (New Master's box calls is "Prime Ape") standing across from me. That is not my kind. It is like the tall, blue one, who is especially vulnerable to my nature.

I have little time to ponder this, as the Prime Ape comes at me like a storm. One application of my nature is enough to settle it.

That was stunningly simple. And this simplicity is the rule rather than the exception.

One after the other, the Masters who are not my New Master send out their Others, and they are all of that kind that have little-to-no-defense against me. Perhaps I misheard the New Master when she said Jim used Others like me. I do not question my run of good fortune for long, stretching my mind to its limits to fell one of the Others who reminds me of New Master's tall, blue one.

But anything stretched too far must break. A long-limbed creature strikes with its springy legs like a snake—the snake that crippled me, the snake that haunts me even now.

The agony is in my soul, not my body. New Master has been charitable to me thus far, giving me food, another chance, healing hands when I am hurt—and I hurt often—but she will not tolerate one so weak that he cannot overcome this Other I should be able to best.

"Good job, Duncan!" New Master says. "You've done a lot today, so you deserve a rest."

* * *

I sleep, in my fear of being discarded

In my surprise at hearing kind words when I failed

In ignorance of the Great Change in my body, one that has been long in coming

* * *

When I awake with a body freshly healed and fundamentally changed, She calls me "Hypno." But she also calls me "Duncan." I do not know what to make of this.

But such trifling concerns vanish the instant she embraces me.

I am so shocked I do not even think to apologize to the others for my weakness. On the contrary, She tells me how proud She is of me, for not only my Great Change, but for how well I have done today and every other. She says She is happy to have me.

I weep for the first time in years.

Old Master told me this was a sign of weakness, and the wilds do not tolerate those vulnerable moments of introspection. So I have taught myself not to cry, to use my power to seal my mind against daily despairs.

So I have no defense against the warmth welling up within me. I have only ever taught myself not to cry in sadness or anger. I do not know what to do with tears of joy.

So I weep like a newborn, and She holds me like the mother I never knew.

* * *

"Enjoy your slavery," the whiskered one coughs. It is very old and very bitter. It has been with Masters for generations, long-lived even for its kind.

I should relish this moment. It is not the same whiskered one that Old Master favored over me, but it is a triumph that one of my kind should defeat one of its ilk. Even before Old Master's effusive praise of his whiskered one, I had known that this kind was among the greatest of our kind. For me to have defeated one tells me how far I have come.

But I feel no achievement. I only look upon a wretched, twisted thing whose only small pleasure lay in venting his anger upon challengers to his Master's Master.

His has not been the greatest of lots in life, but I cannot fathom his bitterness. He has been cared for his entire life. He has never known the limp that still hampers me nor has he known the hunger gnawing at me in those wild days.

But he says these hateful things all the same. He spews an endless stream of vitriol even as he vanishes within his Master's sphere, heaping scorn upon this "fool" for gladly serving a Master.

I regret that he is gone so soon. Had I recovered my faculties, I would have told him that I gladly serve Master because I love Master. There is no longer any distinction in my mind. She is the Master I was born to meet, born to serve, born to love.

I look back on my life full of its fragile infancy, troubled time under the Old Master and the near-starvation of abandonment. Then I look at the few weeks I have spent with Master, and it is like night and day. It is true that I have been beaten and shocked and burned for Master, but these are sacrifices I make willingly.

She has never asked one of us to do a thing we would not have done of our own volition. She gives us love, and we give Her strength.

* * *

Perhaps this is not entirely true.

She gives me more than she gives the Others, but it is simply in my nature.

When I gained the great power of the Great Change, my "Psychic power" (as Master calls it) nearly doubled. However, with this greater gift came a sort of trade.

I no longer have a mouth to take in foodstuffs.

It is true that those of my kind can eat the food that most Others need to survive, but this is a poor substitute for the stuff of dreams. Now that my gift has grown and continues to grow each day, traditional food is now completely worthless. It does not provide the energy I need to use my gifts, so Nature has done away with the redundancy.

I subsist entirely on dreams now.

With Master's journey across this land, I have found enough of them in other travelers and sprawling cities that I rarely want. I am subtle enough now that most do not notice, and we do not linger long enough for most to be any wiser.

However, there have been days of battle that leave me…strained. The only way to center myself is to feed, and when only She is available…

I am not proud of this. She gives so much, and I take more.

The first time I do it, gobbling up a dream of a caregiver who did little of the sort and a member of her pack who hit her, I am aghast. It happens on reflex more than any real intent.

It sets me aflame with the kind of fear and shame I have known since the days before my Great Change. It does not help that the ghastly one—now a haunting one—chooses this particular moment to laugh his terrible, piercing laugh.

I am betrayed. I thought we had come to something resembling friendship, but now he sets the Master awake with a start.

She stares into my eyes, and I stare into hers. There are seconds beyond counting in that stare. I do not know what she thinks. I dare not probe after I have already trespassed.

Then she rolls over and goes to sleep. The haunting one laughs, and She tells him to be quiet.

The next morning, she tells Sasha the night before afforded her some of the best sleep she's ever had.

The next night, Sasha pulls me aside and tells me to eat Master's dreams again. I am appalled. It was a lapse in judgment, I say. I can be stronger than that, I say.

She tells me to stop talking and start eating. This day has been the happiest of Master's life in some time, Sasha says, and she guesses my power is responsible.

With sadness and even a bit of envy in her voice, Sasha says I can give Master a kind of peace no other can.

* * *

"We're so close I can taste it!" Master says with an extra bounce in her step. She twirls a bit, and we marvel at the way the early afternoon sun plays off the eight trinkets we have helped her to win.

I would be lying if I said it had not been a trying time for all of us. Master has dealt with sexism, ageism and a host of other pretexts for people to look down upon her. We have dealt with any number of injuries, and all of us—Master and Other alike—have mourned those of us who have fallen.

Monty, the rolling thunder, gave his life in an explosive burst of power to fell the lump of poison that the Jim Leader of Fuschia had used to poison the rest of us to near-death. Maurice—that tall, blue fellow who hated me so much when Master welcomed me—eventually let go of his hatred just in time to perish at the hands of a rampaging Nidoking. Edward perished on a smoky island when a blazing thoroughbred set him alight.

I fasted for days in my grief.

But we buried each, gave them the send off they deserved and moved ahead with our lives and our goals. We know they would not have stopped for us, and forging ahead is the last, great testament to the lives they have given in that spirit.

"Samantha?"

My blood runs cold.

"Samantha, is that really you?"

"Dean?" Master looks upon his with naked awe.

"Wow, I never thought you'd make it to Victory Road!"

"Well, I did," she says it pleasantly enough, but I can sense the discomfort rolling off of her in waves. I am secretly glad that she cannot feel the anger pouring from me. He doesn't deserve to talk to her like that.

To think….that Master and Old Master would be from the same pack. They talk of a great many things past, things of which I am at turns envious and ashamed. There are things Master has never told me—never will tell me—and there are things I would not have known if Sasha had not bade me eat her dreams.

As they talk, they discuss their journeys. It cuts deep to hear, or rather, NOT to hear a thing about the Others he has abandoned. I can only say for certain that he abandoned me, but it is in his nature to cut off the limb that has no use. I doubt I was the first or the last.

She tells him about us, and my chest swells with pride to know I have fought alongside them and dark amusement at Old Master's astonishment. He can scarcely believe what Master has done.

Grace, the flapping, floundering thing who blossomed into a war goddess

"A Gyarados! No way!"

Amanda, the long, lean thing who shines like a sun in her newly Changed body

"You don't really see too many Ninetales these days, do you?"

Sebastian, who chuckles darkly and "waves" as he flexes his clawed hands

"That thing is so freaking creepy."

Sasha, who eyes him like she is about to pounce

"You've still got your starter? That must have been hard."

Benjamin, who is still as mysterious to me as the stars

"I can't believe you're wasting a slot on a Bug."

And finally, there is me.

I will myself to be strong, for Master, for my own peace of mind. I look Old Mas—Dean in the eyes. There is an inkling but no real realization.

"You know, I had a Drowzee for a while," he says. "But I threw it out. Everything else is second string when you've got an Alakazam."

Master's rage eclipses my own.

"Threw it out! How could you do that, Dean! It's not a piece of trash! It's an animal with feelings and everything! And why am I even calling it 'it'? Was it a boy or a girl? Do you even know?"

Dean takes it all in with a surprise that quickly cools into an all-too-familiar contempt.

"Oh, you're one of those trainers," he says. "Pokemon are people, too, and all that jazz? Give me a break. We're trainers, Sam! We're supposed to make a team of the best and brightest so we can even have a chance of beating the Elite Four. We're not going to stand a chance if we coddle every little charity case that comes along."

"Fine," she snaps in a way I've never heard. "If you're even half as great as you think you are, I'll see you at the Hall of Fame. But something tells me you won't make it that far. People like you are all talk."

We begin moving, and I am proud of Her and myself for not wasting any more of our time on this child. At least, we wouldn't have if he had known when enough was enough.

"You bitch," he mutters. "You stupid little bitch! You don't have any right to talk to me like that! You're the runt no one wanted! You're a washout and a failure. You didn't go on some journey. You just used that as an excuse to run away.

"But if you're so screwed up in the head that you actually think you're better than me, it looks like it's my job to smack you down again. Just like your old man! Show 'em, Alakazam!"

The anger radiating from my Master was so cold and so pure that it would have had a home even in the Arctic.

She did not even have to give the order for me to move to counter the Alakazam. I may not have been her first choice for this duel, but I need this. I need to show him that we are not weak, to prove to the Alakazam that I am more than this shadow.

"What a cruel mistress, Lady Fate!" Dean's Alakazam twirls his spoon. "To think that you and I might meet again, Drowzee!"

"That's not my name," I say.

"Do not think a shedding of skin can fool me, Drowzee," the Alakazam smirks as much as his face will allow. "Your mind is every bit as porous and chaotic as it was in days of old. I shall pierce your feeble defenses and leave you a drooling, shivering derelict just as I did in our first encounter. Prepare yourself, Drowzee."

"I said that's not my name." I emphasized my point by shoving back against the growing bubble of Psychic pressure bearing down on me. For just a fleeting moment, he looks shocked that I could repel him so easily. That alone will have made this all worth it, but I don't want to settle for it either. I'm going to win. For Her. I'm going to prove to both of them that Dean's way is not the way.

"What are you playing at?" His eyes narrow into daggers.

"I'm not trying to hide anything, and I know I can't fool you. I'm not trying to be clever. I don't answer to that title because it is not my name. I'm not some anonymous soldier propping up that horrible little boy's ego anymore. I am individual. I have a name. My name is Duncan."


End file.
